What emotions lead to posting?

[nancylebov]

I recently posted some psychological good sense, and the question of why I posted it came up.

I have some usual reasons for posting: "That's cool! Other people will like it!" and "That's outrageous! The world must know!" and "Help!" and "Here's an interesting thing was thinking-- you might be interested, too". The good sense post (and the book it's from are decent stuff, but when I got to that particular chapter, I had a strong feeling that there were people (not individually specified and not necessarily on my flist) who needed to see it, and therefore it was a good idea to post it.

What motivates you to post?

Comments

[andrewducker]

Something I find fascinating, and think other people are going to find likewise.

I can be fascinated for emotional, aesthetic or intellectual reasons.

Edit: That's for links, of course. I post actual content whenever the mood takes me, which is left often than it used to be.

[madfilkentist]

My posts fall mostly into three categories: stuff about myself which I'd like others to know, amusing things which people on my flist will like, and posts to provoke people's thoughts and get a discussion going. Sometimes there's a particular person I have in mind with a post, but if it isn't something of general interest, I'll just email it.

There's also the occasional sheer rant out of frustration, but I try not to do too many of those.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

What emotions, or what motives? To me those are entirely distinct questions.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Could you expand on that?

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

An emotion is an internal physiological and psychological state. Many such states lead to overt action and the pursuit of goals (as the derivation e-motion suggests); but some just lead to passive contemplation. This is especially the case for emotions evoked by works of art, but not exclusive to those.

A motive is something that gets me to take action. It may be an emotion, such as anger or fear or affection, but it need not be. It may be more of the nature of a conscious, even calculated purpose. It may even be external: For example, if I've committed myself to do something, I will choose to take the steps required to bring it about. It's perfectly possible for me to have all three aspects present: Emotion, purposeful goal, and situational necessity.

Some emotions are motives, and some motives are emotions. But they're overlapping circles in the Venn diagram; neither is inside the other. And they're definitely two distinct circles.

[siderea]

Having read your comments twice, I still do not understand how you mean them to answer the question in or otherwise address the topic of the OP.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I think understand whswhs' point. I used "emotion" in the subject line and "motivates" in the question at the end.

The connection between emotion and action-- for that matter, the roots of action of any sort-- are big and important questions. I speak as a person with a lot of problems with inertia.

However, I don't know how to split them out in regards to posting. I notice that one of the reasons I don't post sometimes is lack of access to enthusiasm. Either I'm not interested enough in potential topics (or the universe is letting me down by not supplying me with good topics), or a topic looks interesting, but then I can't imagine other people being interested enough in it.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

That's exactly right. To me, "what emotion" and "what motivation" are two quite different questions. Do you want to know what I feel before, as, and after I post? Or do you want to know what payoff makes me decide a post is worth making? In my case, at least, the payoff is not necessarily emotional.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

That is, I'm trying to clarify what the question is, so that I can (possibly) answer it.

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

All of those, plus the time and extrovert spoons to feel comfortable sharing.